Don’t torture kids with math skills they’ll never use
Math. Yuck. Yes, it’s not politically correct to say that because supposedly it could deter some girl from becoming a scientist or engineer. But, yuck anyway. And any girl who has aspirations to a future in what is called the STEM careers isn’t going to be deterred by someone else’s dislike for math.
However, there is now a panic abroad in the land ever since the news last week that 40 per cent of Grade 9 students in Alberta failed their provincial math tests. This is nothing new. Kids have been lousy at math for generations. And while much fault can be found with current teaching methods which apparently have more to do in the early grades with journaling and letting kids figure out concepts by themselves, it’s not the whole picture.
Thousands of kids have been guinea pigs for every new fad in teaching math that has come along over the years. Then, when a fad falls out of favour, it’s too late for all those kids who have moved on, completely at sea. Meanwhile, along comes the next cohort of students to be innocent victims of whatever trendy new teaching method has just been embraced.
I’m willing to bet that many of those kids who failed the provincial tests did better in the early grades but then got out of their depth in junior high math classes. And why wouldn’t they? The following outcome is from the Grade 7 Alberta
Save it for the ones who have an aptitude for math.
math curriculum: “Identify and plot points in the four quadrants of a Cartesian plane, using integral ordered pairs ... Perform and describe transformations (translations, rotations or reflections) of a 2-D shape in all four quadrants of a Cartesian plane (limited to integral number vertices).”
Or this, from the Grade 9 curriculum: “Explain and illustrate strategies to solve single variable linear inequalities with rational coefficients within a problem-solving context” and “Determine an approximate square root of positive rational numbers that are non-perfect squares.” Or even this: “Solve problems and justify the solution strategy, using the following circle properties: the perpendicular from the centre of a circle to a chord (that) bisects the chord ...”
Math 20-2, one of the three math courses that can be taken to fulfil a graduation requirement, covers quadratic functions and equations, radicals, and statistical and proportional reasoning.
It’s ironic that one of the desired outcomes for Grade 9 math is: “Use experimental or theoretical probabilities to represent and solve problems involving uncertainty.” For a student who is simply not math-oriented, the entire curriculum is one big uncertainty.
Statistics for the Calgary Board of Education for the previous school year show that more kids are doing poorly in math than in any other core class, with 40.6 per cent failing the Grade 9 provincial exam. The Calgary Catholic board came in only somewhat better, with 26.6 per cent of Grade 9s failing that test. Sarah Bieber of the parent group, Kids Come First, told Postmedia that these results are “the price that we are paying for our kids still not having a mastery of basic math functions.”
She’s partly right. But nothing ’s going to change until math, rather than just the teaching of it, is approached in a whole different way. Drop the Cartesian planes, the quadratic equations and all that gobbledygook as a requirement for all students.
Save it for the ones who have an aptitude for math.
For kids who are not math-minded, that material is frustrating, incomprehensible, hellish and useless for their future endeavours.
How many of us adults in non-math careers have ever had use for a quadratic equation in everyday life? How many of us can even remember how to do one? Instead, teach math as it applies to the real world of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, budgets, rents, the art of making change in one’s head, investing, taxes, simple accounting and all things practical rather than esoteric.
When it comes to real life, struggling with the esoteric just does not add up.